Expelliarmus
This is the spell that Harry Potter uses when he’s in a duel.
This how I feel sometimes when I’m duelling against the manipulation of the internet, email marketing and advertising.
No matter what I do I’m bombarded with these messages every day. They suggest that we are exposed daily to 5000 marketing messages. We don’t even know it’s happening to us.
A connection of mine Nolan Clemmons posted this fabulous graphic (see below) illustrating the routes that corporations use to manipulate us using email and the internet. Once they have us in their sales funnel they will bombard us with adverts wherever we browse, in our email inboxes and then eventually by phone.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe the Internet is a great invention, I’m an advocate a believer and yet I also believe that tech companies have carefully examined us humans as targets and data sets to be manipulated and controlled.
Governments actually love Facebook, they may suggest all sorts of action for data leaks, privacy hacks etc., but they themselves are the biggest users of searching for individuals using these technologies. I’ve sat in front of cyber security experts that have shown me a whole host of hacks they use to get the intel that governments, security firms, the police, MI5, the FBI, NSA, GCHQ and the CIA need in order to locate criminals. Well they can adopt these techniques for all of us too, for any of us. On the day of publishing this, I received this email.
By: Sarah Miller — Citizens Against Monopoly
Facebook Inc. is inviting Capitol Hill staffers to Washington DC’s “newest, most exclusive event venue” for free food and drinks. Events like this enable Facebook to peddle influence in the halls of power, and keep lawmakers from cracking down on its abuse of our democracy. In the first quarter of 2018, Facebook spent $3.3 million lobbying the U.S. government, more than ever before. That’s a key part of how it builds power and evades accountability, and events like this one are part of the process. At “A Place to Connect,” Facebook’s executive and top lobbyists will be schmoozing the people who are supposed to represent us, and trying to bamboozle Congress into believing that the company’s reforms are for real. For instance, a former corporate lawyer who is now Facebook’s deputy chief privacy officer will try to argue that Facebook is stepping it up on privacy — all actual evidence to the contrary.
Sign the Freedom From Facebook petition. Tell the Federal Trade Commission to break up Facebook’s monopoly: https://freedomfromfb.com
You know when you get that sinking feeling, that what you’ve been doing on the Internet for over a decade in order to be noticed, get found and help your own small business is now catching up with you and the realisation that corporations are using all your data to make millions, no sorry, billions.
Today I sat through a presentation by the UK CEO of Cisco and he told us that in 2018, that’s right now, there are 18 billion devices connected to the internet, by 2020 it will be 50 billion and by 2030 it will be 500 billion, that’s ½ trillion devices connected to the internet. And that’s not just mobile phones by the way, of course it couldn’t be.
He also said there are more mobile phones in the world compared to toothbrushes. What a ridiculous statistic that is, but it’s true!!
Happy brushing!
Just saw this interview with Jaron Lanier on Channel 4 news in the UK. He confirms the manipulation point.